While I see where you’re coming from here, I’m very leery about having the gov’t proscribe in such detail what the interaction between employee/employer is. Vacation time is not currently at the employee’s discretion, but typically left up to the individuals to work out. Is there a rampant abuse of vacation power by corporate America today?
Vacation time is typically requested at the employee’s discretion, subject to due notice and employer approval. This is analogous to veto power. Employers may tell you when you CAN’T take vacation, but they usually can’t make you take your vacation at the times they want you to(I guess vetoing everything but a specific timeframe would have that effect, but this seems to be rare). This is in contrast to the implementation of PTO as mentioned in the bill, where a employer decides when you get your PTO. The contractual nature of the PTO benefit gives lots of leeway to build a balanced framework. Checks and balances is what I’m after.
Enjoy,
Steven
Don’t forget. That ‘paid comp time’ thing hits employers balance sheets.
Speaking as a guy with both p/l responsibility and bookkeeping headaches I can attest that having an employee with a huge amount of leave sitting out there is a royal pain in the ass. All that time is represented on the balance sheet as dollars owed to that employee. And that sucks. I’d much prefer to just pay the damn OT and get it off the books.
And hell, I’d kill for any sort of compensation for hours over 40. Any.
Steven:
We’re really getting into nitpick territory here, so probably not much point in continuing down that road. I’d argue that the employee has the option of just taking the OT and being done with it if he doesn’t trust his employer. IMO, that’s plenty of balance. But you have a different opinion and perhaps we should just leave it at that. A bill such as you are proposing would be better, in mind, than the current situation. We just disagree on the details of implimentation.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I can see how some employers, perhaps even my own, would definitely take advantage of this law, and I don’t think they would do it for evil purposes (images of mustachio’d businessmen cackling in the background here… sorry).
Most employers, other then non-profit corporations, are in the business of making money, which does not always serve the needs of employees. Payroll is one of the costs of business that simply does not go away, but it can be manipulated.
By putting the time frame of the provision of comp time largely on the employer’s desk, this law gives them the opportunity to manipulate its use to their advantage. Nothing really wrong with this so far, other than the fact that the comp time should be there for the employee’s convenience, not the employer’s. That’s a real problem with the law, but not an insidious one.
The insidious part comes when employers “encourage” employees to take comp time rather that overtime pay. This encouragement could be for valid reasons or not, but as others have pointed out, it’s reasonable to expect that it will happen, and the opportunity for abuse is there. Even if a company isn’t “evil,” they may find it financially expedient to use this law in ways which it is not intended to be used.
The company I work for, as an example, could potentially use this as a temporary stopgap against overtime pay. I actually like this company quite a bit, and I respect (most) of its leadership a great deal. However, when the numbers come down the wrong way, changes have to be made… and I can see the potential for this law being used adversely. I certainly don’t think our CEO is “evil” by any measure (he’s actually a great guy who’s earned my respect, and is much of the reason why I’m still here after 4.5 years), but I do see the potential for using this law adversely.
That’s a bit of an assumption you make there, don’t you think? For what it’s worth, I’m equally uncomfortable with both ideas. I think they both could work, but there is a great deal of potential problems, possibly abuse.
I suppose I stand somewhere between the OP’s pessimism and, for example, december’s overly optimistic (perhaps naive) stance. I would like to think that the law would be used as I believe it’s intended, to benefit the employee. Being realistic, however, I can see that some employers would likely misuse or abuse their “discretion” in the awarding of comp time to the detriment of employees.
My main problem with the law is that, as already stated, the discretion of the use of comp time should be at the employee’s discretion, at a time chosen by the employee, but subject to the employer’s approval. This is just like the model most businesses use for paid vacation, and I see no reason why the model used for comp time shouldn’t be similar, if not the same. Without that, there’s no real incentive for the employee to choose comp time rather than overtime pay. It’s a relatively meaningless law, in my book, since many employers already insitute an “under the table” comp time policy and this only complicates it and makes it less useful.
In the last two years, thanks to fluctuations at this company, I’ve worked as both an exempt and non-exempt employee, if that means anything.
Corporations will act in their own best interests… that is to say, the route that offers the greatest opportunity for growth and/or profit.
They will do so at the expense of their employees.
They have ALWAYS done so, historically, and will ALWAYS continue to do so, until we finally reach the glorious Star Trek future where money is obsolete because the human race has done finally growed up.
E-yeah. Right.
The only protection the working man is going to have is that which the government offers him by regulating business’s natural tendency to want to ride roughshod over him.
…and an administration that does not do this is no friend of the working man.
It’s that simple.
Yea, but it is the uncertainty and the possible higher cost of overtime that drives bookkeepers nuts. Just like the uncertainty of a huge amount of PTO/Vacation makes them nuts.
Assuming they take cash for their OT an employee working a 61 hour week, then a 40 hour week costs more than a 61 hour week paid as a 40 hour regular week followed by a 8 hour regular day and 32 hours of paid time off. Since OT isn’t always predictable, this can really add to the bottom line fast. Turning around that PTO is important to avoid having to cash it out,(and avoid hair loss among your accounting/payroll staff) but there are situations when it would cost an employer less to let it ride and have them take it later(remember, they take it when the employer says) than to pay OT. Imagine someone who makes 2k per week. A 61 hour week would net them ~3.5k if they took the OT and then they’d make another 2k their next week. Net outlay 5.5k for those two weeks. If they take PTO in compensation for OT instead of cash then they are flat 2k for both weeks. The employer loses ~32 hours of productive work in the second scenario, but their cash outlay is 1.5k less. If their business slows down to where the productivity isn’t as important as the cash(as with seasonal/cyclical businesses) then this is a very attractive scenario.
Me, I’m salaried. That means they can work me until I fall apart and I get no extra compensation. Still think the system should be fairer for hourly employees, even if I’m not one of them.
Enjoy,
Steven
On Preview:
John. I agree the employee has the option of just taking the cash abd being done with it. In theory. In reality it would seem that exercising this option could cause problems. In theory, causing someone problems over exercising this option is illegal(by the text of the bill). In reality, proving the reason your hours were cut, or you were passed over for promotion, or whatever other subtle pressure the employer can use, was in response to choosing cash(more expensive in terms of real dollars for the employer) over PTO(less expensive in terms of real dollars for the employer) is so difficult as to be an inadequate check on the potential abuse by employers.
Chance for abuse? Check.
Motive to abuse? Check.
Abuse illegal? Check.
Abuse provable? Not really.
Fails the test as far as I’m concerned. YMMV
Hmm, guess I shouldn’t compose replies to a thread while talking on the phone and doing other stuff in other windows. The first bit of that should have been addressed to Jonathan Chance. It was pretty much a direct reply to his bit about the motivation to abuse PTO arrangements being partially offset by the headache of scheduling/bookkeeping on the company side. In short, I understand that side of it, I just don’t see it as enough of a disencentive when real dollars are on the other side.
Enjoy,
Steven
And this is the crux of the liberal argument - the assumption that employers are always looking for a way to screw over their employees, and that employees are powerless to stop it in any way short of unionization or getting the government to protect them.
In the real world, labor relations are the result of mutual bargaining. If an employer treats employees like crap, he will either get lousy employees, or have to compensate them for his treatment. Or his employees may unionize and cause him grief.
In the real world, the relationship between employers and employees is much closer to December’s example than to the Darwinian minimalism of the left’s examples. I’ve been both an employer and an employee, both in the reasonably recent past. As an employer, I always tried to understand employee’s concerns and do the best for them, within the constraints of the reasonable. As an employee, I’ve always tried to understand the needs of the employer, and be accomodating whenever reasonable.
But the activism of the left requires that employers be demonized. It’s US against THEM. The result is a poisoning of the workplace with bad faith and bad attitudes. Employees try to get everything they can, and employers in turn are forced to take a hard line with employees. That sucks for BOTH parties.
The pattern I’m seeing in this thread is that a law is bad if there is ANY way in which an employer could possibly be left with the ability to gain an advantage over an employee. You guys leave no room at all for employers and employees to sort these issues out for themselves. Everything must be regulated and controlled by the government.
Thanks, but I’d rather live in a world where people are free to deal with each other as equals, rather than being constantly forced into the straightjackets of micromanaged government regulation.
I live in Tennessee.
A so-called “right to work” state. Translation–“right to get fired” state.
Employees in this state have NO rights not mandated by the Federal Government. You may be fired for any or no reason at all.
As far as the argument that employers only hurt themselves by mistreating their employees—well, you might want to introduce that idea to local businessmen. Around here, they’ve never heard of it.
On one occasion, I was fired from a job as a cashier because I prefered reading to football on my time off. I was a good cashier & I get my self-respect from the work I do, but the boss thought that reading, when you weren’t obliged to, was, and I quote, “weird”.
So I was canned.
On another occasion, my sister & her friends were fired from their jobs in a local bar, when the bar re-located. My sister quickly discovered that the owner had collected unemployment insurance fees from the girls’ paychecks, & had never paid into the fund! He just stole it.
Other people had filed for the money in the past, but when they discovered that there was no money set aside in their names, they just gave up. They didn’t understand their rights, & got screwed.
Time after time, pension funds disappear after corporate mergers take place. Nobody ever gets arrested. The funds are mysteriously gone. The employees are screwed. If not by executives, then by who?
Employers have all the friends money can buy. The whining of executives, with their company perks & extra benefits, & gigantic bonuses makes me sick! Your complaints are just too precious for words. 
“The poor sometimes object to bad government; the rich object to all government”.~~18th Century source for quotation escapes me at present.
Bosda: So, what you’re saying is that you’d rather not have the option to work OT for comp time instead of extra pay?
I’m saying that, as it stands, I wouldn’t trust companies not to exploit the potential for abuse.
Hmm, nice straw harvest this year.
The key word missing from that arguement is “unfair”. Throw it in between “an” and “advantage”. Makes a difference. Then think of the shape these “advantages” you suggest the “left” is wrong to object to would take in the real world. Pressures to accept PTO instead of cash, even if an employee would rather have the cash. Threats of termination or loss of work due to prefering cash to PTO. Think of it in the context of unskilled labor, where replacing the worker is fairly easy and the benefits of having an experienced worker are minimal. Think of it in terms of modern employer loyalty rates and new layoffs being announced every week. This is what you’re arguing for. Many of the posters in this thread support the idea behind the bill. Flexibility in the employee/employer relationship. What isn’t supported is the implementation of this bill which would allow abuse. It is clear the authors of the bill do not intend for it to allow employers to take the choice of PTO or cash away from the employee. The clause that says it can not be made a condition of employment proves that. What is your issue with making it possible to enforce that intent? To be able to detect abuses that even the lawmakers intend to prevent?
I suggest the opportunities for abuse are real, the motives for abuse are real, the detection mechanism is woefully inadequate. Let’s not even talk about what a remedy would do to the employer/employee relationship.
I don’t think employers in general are out to screw their workers. I do believe the market, especially right now, puts serious pressure on employers to control costs and if this law is implemented as is that it will result in a significant number of abuses. One of the key responsibilites of the US government is to regulate the capitalist economy. Pure capitalism runs roughshod over people, especially the less wealthy/unskilled people. The government has a responsibility to those people. You want to characterize my position as forcing people into “straightjackets of micromanaged government regulation” that is your right. Free country and all that liberal nonsense.
Enjoy,
Steven
On Preview: John, I think Bosda’s point is that he believes far too often the employee won’t actually be given a choice. I think he would support an employee’s choice, but he believes that, as implemented, this bill would give employers that choice and employee’s would either have to swallow it or end up terminated under some pretense.
Sure. And why regulate the banks, and reduce their flexibility? What could ever happen? Why demonize bankers? They’d never do something stupid, causing the bank to fail and the government to bail out their depositors, would they?
Don’t you people ever learn? Protecting the public and employees from the depradations of the minority who would rip them off is unfortunately necessary. Remember that there were sweatshops before the bad old government made them illegal. Ditto child labor. But who would believe those saintly bosses would ever do such a thing?
Hmm. This law might affect me if I continue to work where I am, so I should comment.
I currently work in a production environment as an hourly employee. It’s a bit busy right now, and typically there’s about 5-10 hours of necessary overtime a week, as well as a loose policy where you can work more OT if you want as long as you’re producing, as there’s always backlog to work through. Still, without warning, there might be a slow day where many folks are sent home after 4 hours or so.
Management likes to keep overtime below a certain level, of course. Shopping around for workers who would like time off would significantly cut their budget, as there are plenty of slow days/weeks where these people could just be told not to show. Even if only a third opted, the savings would be significant.
Of course, much like there is a overtime maximum level, this law could create a ‘time off’ minimum level. If too many techs came to insist on pay, the company would lose a flexibility they had come to depend on. That is where I see the potential for subtle pressuring to take time off when the company wants it. While I may not opt for time off myself (in fact I definitely won’t, I’m working for money here. If I really want time off I’ll quit) the decisions of my co-workers will affect me.
I can’t see how this law would help me personally as a hourly employee. By definition, it certainly can’t help me make more money. However, it can definitely help the company increase its profits by cutting its bottom line when other workers opt for time off. As they have to send people home on occasion anyway, why not let that time cut costs?
I might go for it if it gave me a ‘get out of work free’ card, but time off at the whim of the employer doesn’t sound any different than what I’ve got now. Ergo, I must view this legislation as a way for employers to circumvent the protections of the 40-hour work week.
Life was easier when I was salaried, yep.
From Apos’ article:
I think we’ve seen evidence of the ambiguity in this very thread.